On November 7, 2006, Miami Hurricanes football player Bryan Pata was shot and killed outside his apartment complex following a team practice. Pata was 22 years old.
The Washington Post reported at the time:
A Miami-Dade police dispatcher said a call reporting the shooting came at 7:03 p.m.
A police spokesman said the incident took place at Pata's residence and his death was ruled a homicide, Rutland said.
It wasn't until 2021 that Pata's former teammate, Rashaun Jones, was arrested in connection with the murder. Prosecutors charged Jones and alleged he was the one who fatally shot Pata years prior. In August 2021, Jones pleaded not guilty to the charges, as ESPN wrote:
The attorney for the ex-Miami Hurricanes football player accused of murdering teammate Bryan Pata in 2006 said Friday that the case against Rashaun Jones is based on circumstantial evidence that police "sat on" for 15 years.
Defense attorney Michael Mirer represented Jones at a bond hearing in Dade County, Florida, on Friday in which a judge denied his request, meaning the 35-year-old is expected to remain in jail on a first-degree murder charge until his arraignment hearing on Sept. 17. Mirer said Jones will plead not guilty. If convicted, Jones could receive a sentence of death or one of life without the possibility of parole.
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For a few years and as recently as this past July, the prosecutors also told the courts that one of their key witnesses, Paul Connor, had died.
Today, ESPN reported that they found Connor alive, living in an apartment in Louisville, Kentucky:
Florida prosecutors have repeatedly told a court that a key witness in their murder case against a former Miami Hurricanes football player accused in the 2006 killing of teammate Bryan Pata was dead.
However, with the long-delayed murder trial of Rashaun Jones only weeks from its scheduled start in Miami, ESPN reporters knocked on an apartment door in Louisville, Kentucky, recently and found the witness, Paul Conner, very much alive.
Conner told ESPN he wasn't aware anyone from Miami had been looking for him and said he rarely leaves his apartment.
Connor is now 81 years old. He originally called police in 2006 after hearing a "pop" and that he saw "someone 'jogging' away from the parking lot entrance near where Pata was shot." He picked Jones out of a lineup in 2020 and again in 2023. ESPN reported that Connor now doesn't remember what happened in 2006 and doesn't recall his prior statements.
Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the state attorney's office, said prosecutors likely used a public database that "seemed to indicate" Conner was deceased. When asked if this revelation would have an impact on the case, Griffith said, "Is there an impact of that on the case? I would have to say yes, potentially."
In an interview with ESPN, Jones's attorney, Sara Alvarez, said the discovery raised more concerns about the case, "This is a bigger issue. This is just blatant lies. Bald-faced lies. It's a shame and it's disgusting that you would be willing to send a man to prison for the rest of his life without any evidence and then not be honest about what evidence exists and doesn't exist."
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